Microsoft and Yahoo Discussing Search Partnership

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that Microsoft and Yahoo are talking about a search engine partnership as they desperately try to come up with something, anything, to take on Google. 'Although there is no suggestion that Microsoft's failed bid will be resurrected, the two companies are believed to be discussing ways they can link up to combat the growing power of their chief rival, Google. Quoting sources close to the discussions, the authoritative Dow Jones All Things Digital blog said that "the talks between the pair are preliminary and wide-ranging."'"

Comments

Re:To paraphrase Dale Dribble

[arth1]

Microsoft already bought a better search engine (as in engine, not as in implementation) last year -- FAST.
They're not after the Yahoo search engine, they are after the user base.

Re:Why MS cant compete effectively

[interstellar_donkey]

Or, a different way to put it: MS has difficulty because they operate under the assumption that end users will like what they produce, while Google is successful producing things that their end users will like. Rather than saying "This is what you should expect the Internet to be like", Google simplifies things and is more customer driven.

Re:My recent search with Google

[Todd Knarr]

When I punched your search terms into Google, the first result I get back is the wdc.com (Western Digital's site) page for that model of drive. Second result is a questionable tech site, third result is a PCWorld review of the drive. I suspect the problem is on your end, not Google's.

Re:I've seen the future of Search, and it's name i

[wisty]

Twitter search will only be good while the spammers stay off. Which means it can never be too popular.

Re:My recent search with Google

[macshit]

Yup, me too -- exact same search terms, and the first link on google is precisely what the grandparent says he wanted.

It's a bit mystifying really; I regularly see claims in slashdot comments about how awful google is these days, and yet this bears absolutely no resemblance to my own experience -- for me, google's results are extremely good, perhaps even better now than in the past (and certainly leagues ahead of crap like MSN live search).

I'm not sure how to reconcile this ... some possibilities come to mind:

1. I'm simply better at picking search terms than these other people (but what about cases like the current one, where I get perfect results using exactly the same search terms?)
2. Google's great for what I search for (mostly technical subjects), but not so much for what these other people search for (perhaps more ... "contested" subjects like pr0n?) -- but again, that doesn't apply to the current example
3. Google tracks what I search for and somehow adapts better for me (I dunno if this is true, and anyway, I seem to see equally good performance when searching in internet cafes etc)
4. Google does geolocation and somehow gives better results for my location than theirs (they probably do know where I am, but it seems a bit far-fetched to explain the differences)
5. The people claiming google sucks are just MS/spam-king shills trying to spread a bit of FUD...

[Anyone have better ideas?]